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Europeans Capitulate In
Showdown on Cuba
By Meghan Clyne - Staff
Reporter of the The
New York Sun. June 14, 2005.
In the showdown between Old and New Europe
over Cuba, Old Europe has won - and the
communist dictator in Havana, Fidel Castro,
has gotten a break for at least a year.
The European Union decided yesterday not
to restore diplomatic sanctions it imposed
on the island in 2003, affording Mr. Castro
a year of "constructive dialogue"
before next reconsidering whether to ban
high-level diplomats' visits to Cuba, open
embassies in Havana to Cuban dissidents,
and take other measures that have greatly
irked Cuba's strongman.
The decision was issued at yesterday's
External Relations Council meeting, a gathering
of the foreign ministers of the 25 E.U.
member states, in Luxembourg. It was the
most recent development in a diplomatic
saga that began in March 2003, when Mr.
Castro rounded up and jailed 75 independent
academics, journalists, and librarians,
among other opponents, in what is known
on the island as the "primavera negra,"
or "black spring."
In the aftermath of the crackdown, in June
2003, the E.U. responded with diplomatic
sanctions on the island. Among other measures,
the European Union suspended high-level
diplomatic contact with Havana, and began
inviting dissidents to celebrations of national
holidays, where members of the opposition
movement were afforded valuable access to
representatives of the world's second largest
economic power.
The Europeans' retaliation infuriated Mr.
Castro, who promptly declared a "freeze"
on his relations with the continent, posing
difficulties for countries with economic
interests on the island. That freeze thawed
in January, when Spain - under the governing
hand of the Socialist prime minister, Jose
Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, and his foreign
minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos - pushed
the E.U. to lift the sanctions for a six-month
trial period.
High-level diplomatic contact was reinstated,
and dissidents were uninvited from the national
holiday celebrations, with the hope that
ending some of the E.U. practices bothersome
to Mr. Castro would foment "constructive
dialogue" with the regime in order
to bring about reform.
Six months later, the E.U. has determined
that even though "there was no satisfactory
progress on human rights in Cuba,"
it remains willing "to maintain a constructive
dialogue with the Cuban authorities, on
a reciprocal and non-discriminatory basis
... with the aim of achieving tangible results
with regard to human rights, democratization
and the release of political prisoners."
The E.U.'s diplomatic sanctions "remain
suspended" until June 2006, when the
union will next reconsider its common position.
The European Union arrived at the decision
despite the fact that, last week, dissidents
were urging it to reinstate the June 2003
sanctions. Several European lawmakers, too,
urged a tougher line on the Castro regime
in the wake of detentions of lawmakers and
journalists from Italy, Poland, the Czech
Republic, and Germany during the May 20
meeting of the Assembly to Promote Civil
Society in Cuba, the first major successful
gathering of pro-democracy activists on
the island in the 46 years of Castro's reign.
The move disappointed some advocates of
democracy on the island, including representatives
of the Czech Republic, which has lobbied
hard for tougher European measures on Mr.
Castro.
E.U. policy on Cuba has been framed as
a showdown between Old and New Europe, with
Spain representing the former and the Czechs
carrying the banner of the latter.
Spain, because of its historical and linguistic
ties to Cuba, has long been deferred to
by the European community on matters of
Cuban policy. Scholars of Cuba have observed
that because both the left and the right
in Spain have historically had ideological
affinities for Castro's dictatorship, this
usually resulted in lax policies, with the
exception of the June 2003 sanctions under
Prime Minister Aznar. Under the Socialist
Zapatero government, Spain has moved toward
a more accommodating posture. Its ambassador
to Havana, Carlos Alonso Zaldivar, "was
a militant in the Spanish communist party
years ago," the director of the Washington-based
Center for a Free Cuba, Frank Calzon, said.
Since Spain first pushed to temporarily
suspend the sanctions in January, it has
been resisted fiercely by the Czechs, who
represent a new element in European policy-making
informed by years of suffering under Soviet
brutality. The Czech Republic's ambassador
to America, Martin Palousy, said to The
New York Sun, of Cuba: "Basically,
we have a very similar experience in the
past, and we believe that for a healthy
state of transatlantic relations, the question
of principled support for democratic fighters
in countries that are still under totalitarian
regimes is essential."
To that end, the Czechs have been lobbying
in recent weeks for a stricter line in Europe's
policy toward Havana's strongman, including
international speeches by a former Czech
president and dissident, Vaclav Havel. To
the Czechs, replacing Castro's rule with
democracy in Cuba "is a very important
thing," Mr. Palousy said. "We
maybe can sound like idealists, but I believe
that this is a very realistic defense of
our nation's interests as well."
One of the organizers of the Assembly to
Promote Civil Society in Cuba, Rene Gomez
Manzano, agreed. Having E.U. nations open
their embassies to dissidents, in particular,
was "important not only for us, the
opposition, but for those foreign representatives
as well," he said in Spanish.
By shutting the opposition movement out
of embassies, Mr. Gomez said, European diplomats
would be "deprived of our perception,
our analysis - this fount of information"
about the state of affairs in Cuba. "What
other source do they have - the government
of Castro?" he asked, adding that the
solidarity of democracies across the Atlantic
was very important to Cuba's prodemocracy
activists.
Representatives of Spain, however, maintained
that they are committed to fostering democracy
in Cuba but differ in the method of promoting
it. The authority on Latin American policy
at Spain's embassy to America, Juan Jose
Rodriguez Buitrago, said, in Spanish, that
the measures adopted in June 2003 "are
provoking conflict with the government of
Cuba. They don't help the dissident movement.
They don't help anybody."
Mr. Buitrago said yesterday that he was
pleased by the E.U. decision to prolong
the suspension of the sanctions. Even though
there had not been changes in Cuba's human
rights status in the six months of the reprieve,
Mr. Buitrago said, he believed more "patience"
would bring about results.
A spokesman for the Czech embassy in America,
Petr Janousek, said, of yesterday's consensus
decision: "Obviously, we would've been
happier if it didn't happen this way, but
such is life, and we have to live with it."
He said the Czechs remained committed to
trying to improve conditions for Cuba's
dissidents.
In the meantime, that decision to engage
in "constructive dialogue" puts
the European philosophy of Cuba policy in
contrast with America's, which brooks no
engagement with the communist dictator.
A Cuban-American congressman who has lectured
in recent weeks about Cuba's transition
to democracy, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Republican
of Florida, called the European decision
"appeasement."
"I figured this would happen,"
he said. "To say, 'We confirm that
there has not been satisfactory progress
on human rights, but we have nonetheless
decided that measures taken on 5 June 2003
will remain suspended'... It's a sad, pathetic
statement that obviously will give great
encouragement to Castro to continue torturing
in his dungeons," Mr. Diaz-Balart said.
A state department official for Western
Hemisphere affairs with expertise in Cuba
said that the Europeans' decision would
not affect or undermine America's policy
of nonengagement with Mr. Castro, and said
history proved that engagement resulted
only in failure. "U.S. policy exists
in the real world, with the cold, harsh
fact of what Castro is and what he's done
and continues to do to that country and
the people in it," the official, who
asked not to be named, said.
Mr. Calzon, however, found some reasons
for optimism in the Europeans' decision.
Even though "it would be better if
the European Union were to stand firm on
the side of the Cuban people," he said,
the fact that the European Union had extended
the wait-and-see period for another year
meant that it would be keeping its attention
on Mr. Castro. That constant review of the
regime, Mr. Calzon said, would be "totally
unacceptable" to the dictator.
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